1999 Does God Exist? Summer Seminar. If you
are interested in attending this program in Lebanon, Tennessee,
June 21-25, we need to hear from you. Pre-registration is
requested. We must have adequate materials made up and the
logistics of meals set up, etc. To do so requires us to know how
many will be there. Contact John Clayton, 1555 Echo Valley Dr.,
Niles, MI 49120 if you are interested, and we will be happy to
send you an information packet with a registration form included.

Missing Day Study Revived. One of the bad
things about the World Wide Web is that any kook can get on it
and print something that sounds credible to those who have no way
of evaluating what is being said. The result is that stories get
shot out in attachments to thousands of other people and a story
that is totally bogus can be circulated as Truth. Religious
writers are as guilty as anyone of doing this, and one of the
oldest hoaxes to come around has found new life. We recently
received a tract in the mail titled The Heavens Declare the
Glory of God distributed by Gospel Tract Society, Inc., P.
O. Box 1118, Independence, MO 64051.

In the late 1960s, there was a book written by a man named
Harold Hill titled How To Be a King's Kid. This book was
a collections of stories about miraculous acts of God in the 20th
century. Written for a charismatic Pentecostal audience, the book
contained all kinds of claims that could not be verified and
which were, for the most part, the product of a very large
imagination.

One of the stories in this book was a story about some
researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) who were working with one of their satellites and
discovered that there was a day missing out of their data Totally
unable to explain this missing day, they supposedly turned to one
of their technicians who was a student of the Bible and were
amazed to find that the Bible talked about a missing day in
Joshua 10. Unfortunately, this story was picked up and circulated
in thousands of church bulletin in the late 1960s and early
1970s. Those of us who have some background in science worked
hard at that time to try to get people to understand that the
story was not true--and got considerable flack for doing so.
Cooler heads eventually prevailed and the story finally got
buried. Now this story has been revived and is now being
circulated as a proof of the accuracy of the Bible.

There are so many things wrong with this story that it is hard
to know where to start. Here are a few basic points:

NASA has no record of any such discussion or problem.

Harold Hill has admitted that there is no scientific
basis to the story and no evidence it ever happened.

Computers cannot do what is described. The Y2K problem
demonstrates the problem if it does not do anything else.
To go back to the time of Joshua with computers that
cannot handle the year 2000 is an obvious impossibility.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII dropped 10 days out of the
calendar to get the solstice lined up with the religious
holidays the churches at that time held sacred. People
went to bed on Thursday, the 4th and woke up on Friday,
the 15th. There were riots in Frankfort by people
convinced that the Pope had stolen 10 days out of their
lives. All of Europe was in chaos as landlords tried to
collect rent for a month that was 10 days short, and
interest on savings was cut due to the shortened number
of days. (For a detailed account of all of this, see Smithsonian,
March, 1999, page 48.) The point is that for someone to
find a missing day when 10 days were dropped out of the
calendar (and actually there have been other adjustments
like this) is ludicrous.

The problem is that people do not think about what they read
in print. The more imaginative it is, the more likely it is that
people are going to accept it--especially if it supports
something they already believe. There have been a lot of stories
similar to this, including stories about atheists getting the FCC
to outlaw religion from radio and television. There are also
stories circulated among atheists that also have no basis but are
designed to reflect negatively on religious organizations or
individuals. Education is the answer to this kind of foolishness,
and responsible people on all sides of the various issues need to
make sure that incorrect information is not propagated whether it
supports their views or not.

Madalyn O'Hair Story Continues. In September,
1995, Madalyn O'Hair, one of her sons, and a granddaughter
disappeared from her home in Austin, Texas, with $629,500 from
the treasury of her atheist organization. Atheist groups would
like to believe she was kidnapped and the money was either stolen
or used as a ransom. Many of us who know by experience that our
atheistic viewpoint would have promoted ourselves as #1 to the
ignoring of morals or ethics believe that some or all of
Madalyn's family simply fled the country with the money. The
response of my atheist friends to this is "Don't judge
others by yourself," but it obviously is at least a
possibility.

One of Madalyn's associates was a man named Danny Ray Fry who
disappeared the same weekend as the O'Hair family. Fry worked for
David Waters who was a former office manager for the O'Hairs.
Waters was convicted of stealing $54,000 from O'Hair's
organization in 1995. He had invited Fry to Texas several weeks
before the O'Hairs disappeared, and Fry had sent money home to
Florida that he had earned from Waters. On October 2, 1995, Fry's
body was found but DNA testing was only done recently to
establish identity. He had been murdered and his head and hands
removed by a sharp instrument.

Madalyn's Bible, diary, and other personal items have been
auctioned off to pay back taxes. No startling revelations have
come from these items--only a pathetic picture of an unhappy and
unfulfilled woman. Under its new president Ellen Johnson and
Editor Frank Zindler The American Atheist organization has moved
to Parsippany, New Jersey, and is growing. We have probably not
heard the last of all this, and if anything factual comes up, we
will let you know. Recent articles on this subject have appeared
in the Corpus Christi Caller Times, February 1, 1999,
page A-1, San Antonio Express News, January 8, 1999, and
Christianity Today, March 1, 1999, page 24.

Where are Ethics Leaders Taking Us? The
Clinton/Lewinski situation has been a barometer of how far
America has sunk in its moral consciousness, but it is not the
only indicator. Princeton University announced recently that it
has selected Peter Singer to be the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of
Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values. Singer has
had considerable attention for his belief that infants are not
humans until they are at least one month old. According to the Washington
Post, he believes that since infants "are not rational
and self-aware," the parents of a baby born with spina
bifida, for instance, could justifiably ask a doctor to give the
baby a lethal injection. It is bad enough to have that belief,
but to have a man with that belief recognized as an authority on
bioethics at a major university seems to this writer to be a
major step by our culture toward Hitler's idea of exterminating
those you define as undesirable. (Pulpit Helps, January,
1999, page 26)

Bigfoot Scam Finally Exposed. We have
contended in this journal and in our public lectures for 30 years
that the 1967 film on Bigfoot running through an area in the
Cascades near the Oregon border was a human in a monkey suit. The
basis of our skepticism was interviews with people living in the
area and people who knew Roger Patterson who took the pictures of
Bigfoot.

Cliff Crook and Chris Murphy are two researchers who have been
studying the film with computer-enhanced images. They report that
the fasteners on the monkey suit are clearly visible in the
enhancement. Those who promote Sasquatch as real are not going to
turn loose of their claims, but when you add it all up, it seems
clear that there is no ape/man living in the Cascades. (U.S.
News and World Report, January 25, 1999, page 61)

Great Carbon Mystery Turns Out to be Design Feature.
We have mentioned previously in our News and Notes the fact that
there was a huge disparity between carbon dioxide emissions in
the world and what could be measured to be the amount actually
present in the atmosphere. Many millions of tons of carbon
dioxide seem to be missing.

Natural History, March, 1999, page 96, contains an
article by William Laurance title "Gaia's Lungs" which
gives a good answer to most of this question. The article
summarizes several studies of forests with over 100,000 trees
over the past 30 years. During that time, the total mass of
living trees per acre in the rainforest has increased by 37,000
pounds. This means that trees absorb over a billion tons of
carbon dioxide each year in the Amazon basin alone. Apparently,
as the CO2 in the air increases, rainforests grow bigger, faster,
and fuller, absorbing more CO2 and keeping things in balance. The
importance of the rainforest is obvious, but we would suggest
that design features built into the forest allow the earth as a
whole to survive sudden changes in critical greenhouse gases.
Design features demand a Designer.

Who Started the AIDS Virus? There have been a
wide range of explanations of how the AIDS virus got into the
human population. There have been those who have said that the
virus was God's way of punishing man for violating God's laws. On
the other extreme we have had evolutionary explanations that
suggest that the virus is a natural product of mutation and
natural selection. We have suggested previously in this journal
that AIDS was a natural product of human sexual interaction with
animals.

Genetic studies have now proven that the virus did in fact
come to humans from chimps. It has been known for some time that
chimps carry the virus and are not affected by it, but the
genetic evidence is overwhelming that the virus made the jump
from chimps to humans and that is its genesis in man. Whether it
got into man by sexual interaction (which is practiced in some
parts of the world) or some other method can not be answered, but
we would suggest sexual interaction is very likely. (Science
News, February 6, 1999, page 84)